And we’re back! We took a long hiatus because, honestly, this spring was especially busy for both of us. But, the time off gave us a chance to re-examine and re-tool some ideas for the podcast.

Most notably, we’re not going to split the sports and movies episodes any more! From now on, it’s a movie we watched for the first half, and some sports we watched in the latter half.

So with this new formula in mind: We watched X-Men First Class! And boy, did I pick a bad order to watch this trilogy. I watched the second one first, the third one second, and the first one last. So, needless to say, I was super confused for most of the movie – especially because I think I might have seen parts of it when it was airing on TV once? I have no idea.

(38:03) After that, a brief update on the Toronto Blue Jays: They suck! Like, really bad. It’s bad. Things are bad. This is not a good year for the Blue Birds.

Next week: We’re going to the movies to see Spider-Man: Homecoming! Finally, Spider-Man escapes the clutches of the Sony-Marvel Universe we just spent so much time immersed in, and joins the Avengers in the Disney-Marvel Universe. Also, we went to an Argos CFL game! We’ll talk about how it was surprisingly exciting, even if most of the crowd wasn’t really watching the game and left before the first half.

It just so happens that my beloved hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and my favourite basketball team, the Toronto Basketball Raptors, both qualified for their respective post-season playoff tournaments. So we talk about both the successful failure of the Leafs, and the failing success of the Raptors.

In particular, we watched the series clinching Game 6 of the Raptors first-round against the Milwaukee Bucks. We didn’t get around to discussing this aspect of the series, but it was a pretty awful case of meme hubris on the part of the Bucks. #bucksin6

Next week: We watch X-Men First Class! (Righting the incredible injustice from Episode 4.)

We watched James Merendino’s Amerikana, a film about two buddies riding a vespa across the American southwest. One’s a neurotic jerk, the other’s a tragically naive sweetheart.

This is a Dogme 95 film, meaning it had to adhere to a very strict set of filmmaking rules which Director James Merendino (better known for directing SLC Punk) had to observe, which Brittany and I go over one by one as we talk about the events of the film.

Because of all the challenging rules the filmmaker had to observe, it looks pretty rough for the first ten minutes or so – very much like a student project. But as the film continues, and as you become more engrossed in lives of the characters, either the film’s production seems to get better, or you just don’t notice its rough edges any more.

Next week: We review how the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors did in the first round of their respective playoffs!

Note: When we recorded this, the Maple Leafs had not yet been eliminated by the Washington Capitals in the Stanley Cup playoffs, but they since have. So, we’ll be watching the Toronto Raptors in Game 6 against the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday, and Game 7 if necessary, if you want to watch along with us! Either way, we’ll review how both teams did in the first round of their respective tournaments!

It’s also a week late. That’s my fault, as I came down with a really horrible sinus cold over the past week.

But, we’re back in the recording studio and ready to talk about the end of the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament! Brittany’s bracket got all screwed up by Kansas not beating the Oregon Ducks, and my bracket was oh so close to correctly predicting the final.

As for the game itself, well, it was defined more by how badly the referees and a big Polish player named Karnowski were screwing everything up.

And of course, you can’t talk about the NCAA Finals without talking about… Wrestlemania! Yes, that’s right, Wrestlemania happened the day before the game, so of course we dive into the Undertaker’s retirement and John Cena proposing to his girlfriend after their match.

(Look, I’m not proud of the fact that I watched the whole thing, but I did, and it was actually pretty great.)

This time we watched the movie Fargo, which I had shamefully never seen until now.

We talk a bit about the Coen brothers, the awards Fargo was nominated for and won, and the three intertwining stories of Jerry Lundegaard, the gangsters Carl and Gaear, and Brainerd Chief of Police Marge Gunderson – which, like so many stories, ends with a battleaxe to the neck, and a body being fed into a woodchipper.

After we wrap up that discussion, we do a quick check on our NCAA March Madness brackets. (As of my writing this, Brittany’s bracket is pretty much completely broken, but mine is still alive and well! Go Ducks!)

As promised, we each make our brackets for the March Madness college basketball tournament. (Which is why this is such a lengthy episode!)

Before we do that, though, the spirit of the podcast is that we each actually watch a sporting event, not just talk about one that’s yet to happen. So, we watched Canada vs. USA in the World Baseball Classic. And, boy, did it suck.

Luckily, after we’ve discussed how bad at baseball Canadians seem to be, we get to the fun part – going through the bracket and arbitrarily choosing teams.

We start things off by watching the movie Bleu – one third of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy.

Anonymous on IMDB describes the movie this way:

“The first part of Kieslowski’s trilogy on France’s national motto: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. ‘Blue’ is the story of Julie who loses her husband, an acclaimed composer and her young daughter in a car accident. The film’s theme of liberty is manifested in Julie’s attempt to start life anew, free of personal commitments, belongings, grief or love. She intends to numb herself by withdrawing from the world and living completely independently, anonymously and in solitude in the Parisian metropolis. Despite her intentions, people from her former and present life intrude with their own needs. However, the reality created by the people who need and care about her, a surprising discovery and the music around which the film revolves heal Julie and draws her back to the land of the living.”

Bleu is one of the first art films Brittany ever watched, so it’s an appropriate choice for our first episode.

Next time on Best of Both Worlds: We draw up our March Madness brackets!

So, each week, we’re going to watch either sports, or a movie. Then we’ll record our conversation about what we watched. Hopefully by the end we’ll have learned something new about each other’s favourite interest!

We thought about calling this podcast “Will and Brittany make each other watch things they want to watch, and then explain why they wanted to watch it”, but that was a bit unwieldy.

We encourage you to watch along with us! We’ll do our best to announce ahead of time what we’re planning on watching, so you can join in on the experience!

But either way, we’ll meet back here and go over the most important points together, before breaking down what we liked, didn’t like, and what makes what we watched so special.